As we asked while putting together the book review section in this issue — as we seem to ask while putting together the book review section of every issue — what should we do when a book has a “(Mostly) True Story” in its subtitle? Where do we put it?

Sometimes it’s implied, but this time it’s spelled out. The book is A Voyage in the Clouds: The (Mostly) True Story of the First International Flight by Balloon in 1785 by Matthew Olshan, illustrated by Sophie Blackall, and is the entertaining account of…well, see the subtitle. Now, the signal event of the book actually happened, historically, just not exactly the way it does in the book; Olshan scrupulously and wittily delineates the deviations from the record in an author’s note. But where do we put it?

Unlike the hapless maiden from the TV commercial whose swain promises the movies but delivers only the laundromat (“laundry, movies — same thing”), we are happy with A Voyage in the Clouds as both picture book and historical account. You are not getting one thing or the other; you’re getting both, and they’re both good. But where do we put it?

Librarians ask this question every day (at least when they’re not asking, “Now, where did we put it?”). The classification of knowledge is the basis for the business. Reviewers also, whether they mean to or not, classify as we work: am I thinking of this as this kind of book or that kind of book? Where does it fit among these other books “like it,” or indeed among the books I read earlier this week?

A Voyage in the Clouds ended up being reviewed in the picture book section, since it is a picture book for sure and only arguably nonfiction. But I love to keep the question turning in my head. Last year we got wind of a teacher who took the Core Standards rather too much to heart and insisted that only photographs could serve as illustration to nonfiction worthy of the name. Without getting into the relative “realness” of photographs versus paintings or drawings, let’s do ask whether requirements for accuracy in nonfiction apply to pictures as well as text. Or what about accuracy in fiction? Years ago, on what was then YALSA’s Best Books for Young Adults committee, one of the more athletic members was beside himself with indignation because Cynthia Voigt messed with the cross-country track schedule in order to serve the needs of The Runner. (I didn’t even know cross-country had a schedule.) And as I type, a Twitter battle is raging about accusations of cultural inaccuracies in Raina Telgemeier’s Ghosts. How much factual leeway is fiction allowed to have before it’s called — what?

And as someone who quotes a poem each day on Facebook, you would think I would be thrilled about just how much poetry is popping up everywhere, as picture book, science book, biography, verse novel — but I can’t recall the last time I read a book of poetry for young people that could go nowhere but the 811s. Like Bertha Mahony Miller herself, I barely scraped through cataloging class, and now more than ever I fervently wish I had paid better attention.

If questions about the categorization of books interest you as much as they do me, I hope you will consider coming to this fall’s Horn Book at Simmons Colloquium. Titled “Out of the Box” and taking place on October 1 at Simmons College in Boston, the colloquium will consider the ways books resist — nay, thumb their noses at — our attempts to box them in, to label them each as one thing or another. We will take as our primary examples this year’s Boston Globe–Horn Book Award winners and honor books, and their authors and editors will be in attendance to participate in the discussion. An invitation to our swell party for the BGHB Awards the night before is part of the package; you can find out more at hbook.com/hbas.

From the September/October 2016 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.